Valve renames the artifact card to make it non-racist



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Valve Card Game Artifact goes out in November. Recently, the Artifact Twitter account tweeted drawings for some of the maps with explanations of how they worked. September 26, which included a card called "Crack The Whip," whose text begins with "Editing a Black Hero …" Today, the name of the card has been changed.

In the context of the game, the term "black" is not used racially, but rather to designate cards of a certain color with a thematic connection. Crack The whip's illustration is that of a large blue lizard creature whipping a group of small blue lizard creatures on a battlefield. The words themselves, taken together, read as an allusion to slavery and the subjugation of people of color by whites.

People following the game, such as ResetEra commentators, noticed the connection. "How do people not catch these things?!?," Wrote one of them. "Since I'm unconscious sometimes, but even I can see the problem here." The answers to the first Artifact tweet also saw the obvious problem. "A card called Crack the Whip that modifies the black heroes … guessing there is not much diversity in the offices of Artefact," reads in the first response.

Valve did not respond to a request for comment by Kotaku about how that kind of thing ended up in the game or whether there was an internal discussion about its implications. However, soon after Kotaku reached at Valve this afternoon, the company announced through another tweet about the Artifact Twitter account that he would change the name of the map to "Coordinated Assault".

Artifact is currently in closed beta on Steam and is expected to release on November 28th.

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